| Term | Definition |
|---|
| anaphora | repetition of a word or phrase as the beginning of successive clauses |
| irony | incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs |
| litotes | understatement for rhetorical effect (especially when expressing an affirmative by negating its contrary) |
| periphrasis | substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name |
| consonance | the repetition of consonants (or consonant patterns) especially at the ends of words |
| assonance | the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words |
| metonymy | substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself (as in 'they counted heads') |
| anthimeria | The substitution of one part of speech for another |
| hyperbole | extreme exaggeration |
| synecdoche | using a part of something to represent the whole thing |
| epistrophe | repetition of the ends of two or more successive sentences, verses, etc. |
| alliteration | repetition of initial consonant sounds |
| ellipsis | omission or suppression of parts of words or sentences |
| asyndeton | a construction in which elements are presented in a series without conjunctions |
| parallel structure | the repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures |
| parenthesis | a message that departs from the main subject |
| metaphor | a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity |
| simile | comparison using like or as |
| oxymoron | a figure of speech consisting of two apparently contradictory terms |
| paradox | a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words that imitate sounds |
| veresimilitude | The quality of a text that reflects the truth of the actual experience. |
| antimetabole | Repitition of words in succussive clauses in reverse grammatical order ("You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy.") |
| anadiplosis | A technique in which the word at the end is the same as the start for the next sentence. |
| polysyntedon | The use of conjunctions in close succession |
Combine with other sets
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